“The hatred of truth is the taproot of violence.”

“Keep in mind the roots of violence: Lust, envy, anger, avarice, and vengeance...the taproot...the killer's ultimate and truest motivation...is the hatred of truth...the hatred of truth is a vice. From it comes pride and an enthusiasm for disorder.”

“Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.”

“Maybe it was this: The name of a person marked for murder is just a name, but the face makes real the cost of violence, for if we have the nerve to look, we can see in any face our own vulnerability.”

“There were two types of survivors in life: those, like her, who found the requisite strength in having once been loved with great intensity; and those who, having not been loved, learned to thrive on hatred, suspicion, and the meager rewards of revenge.”

“The truth was stranger than the official fiction.”

“Malevolence and paranoia cohabit in a twisted mind. Bad men trust no one because they know the treachery of which they themselves are capable.Bad men...destroy one another, although...they prefer those who are innocent and as pure as this world allows them to be. They feed on violence, but they feast on the despoiling of what is good.”